Ramblings from travels to the interior and exterior

On the Iniquities of Cravings

Few things in life are as annoying as getting a sudden craving late in the evening for a food item that’s: (1) not available in any restaurant or supermarket in the vicinity of one’s neighborhood; (2) too cheap to qualify for delivery—if delivery is even an option; and (3) too specific to be substituted by anything actually available in one’s refrigerator—which never contains anything remotely interesting apart from fungi in any case.

When this happens to me—which is fairly often given that my lifestyle requires dinners served no later than 6:00 pm and preferably even earlier than 5:00 pm—I can count on passing the rest of the evening in a state of disgruntled ill-humor. It’s a simple case of four deadly sins canceling each other out: on the one hand, pride (in the form of vanity) and sloth advise abstention; on the other hand, gluttony and greed demand indulgence.

Not much really—though a dozen half-hearted forays through the contents of one’s refrigerator (in the hopes of finding an abandoned tub of ice cream) can expend enough energy to induce sleep and its concomitant relief.